40 Patchtown

by Damian Dressick

  Without so much as a horn blast, McMullen wrenches the deputy sedan off the road into the railyard till he’s running slow and steady up against the crush of miners swelled back away from the train. Folks are yelling and cussing and tripping over their feet to get out of the way, but McMullen just keeps right on going, pushing the whole crowd with the big chrome grill till that sedan’s bumper is right up flush to the train. When the scab herders roll open one of the railcar doors, the two Pinkertons inside point their shotguns out over the crowd. I’m thinking that McMullen is one cold operator, getting his whole passel of Cossacks all the way from the Little Office to the train car without saying a single word.

  Like he can’t wait no longer to give it to us miners, McMullen’s the first one stomping outta the sedan. He’s grabbing and pulling the rest of them deputies out of the sedan, cursing and cuffing them cross the shoulders to get up onto the train car. The two scab herders reach them down a hand while the other Pinkertons keep their shotguns trained on us.

  Standing back on the slag heap away from the tracks with Buzzy, I can see Charlie Dugan working his way through the studda babas over to where the Cossacks are climbing up into the train, but them old ladies are bunched in thick and they’re slow moving, so Charlie don’t even get far as the tipple before every one of the deputies what rode over from the Little Office are perched up in the train car and pointing them rifles down at us.

  Lodged right in the middle of all them Pinkertons, McMullen wraps one hand round the white butt of his holstered pistol and holds a sheet of grimy paper in the other. He waves that dirty paper at us, like it’s the Declaration of Independence or maybe the bill of sale for the town.

  “My name is Lieutenant John McMullen of the Special Police,” he shouts to us miners. “I been lawfully and dutifully charged by Burgess Barefoot of Windber to clear you rabble out of the train station for preventing the passage of workers over a public thoroughfare.”

  Chanting “Struck Mines!” and “Scabs go home!” not a one of us miners near that platform is having this lawful and dutiful shit. A lot are just yelling that McMullen can go to hell trailing right behind old Berwind. I see a few women readying their pennies to throw at the scabs.

  “There’s the sunafabitch I’m after,” Buzzy says.

  At first I don’t know what he’s talking about, but once I follow Buzzy’s eyes up to the rail car, I recognize the fat deputy standing left of McMullen is the same one that give Buzzy his beat down in the yard behind our house.

  McMullen’s snarling down at us and it’s almost like there’s an electric current twisting his face something fierce. I don’t think even he gives no kinda shit about lawful or dutiful, cause he’s spitting right down into the crowd.

  “Ya sunsabitches better clear the hell outta here,” he shouts. “Or you’ll all pay heavier than Homestead.”

  Most folks are still kinda laughing, like he’s gonna chase away a thousand angry miners with less than ten Pinkertons. Some of the men are talking ’bout just pulling him down off the train and give him what for.

  But when the other five train car doors crash open, there’s three Pinkertons in each one. Every last one of them sunsabitches are pointing shortbarrel shotguns right into the crowd. Everybody shuts up their mumbling and starts looking round at each other, like they don’t know whether to sing Anioł Pański or go blind.

  I’m mostly keeping my eye on Buzzy though, no matter what anybody else is doing. Groping some of them rail nuts outta his pants, he’s already got the slingshot yanked out and ready. He peeks out from behind the corner of the powerhouse, fingering a nut into the nest and draws back the elastic. It’s a pretty long shot, but Buzzy ain’t no joke with a slingshot. I seen him hit rats sniffing around the sawmill the whole way from the shifter’s shanty. He’s got one eye closed and is sighting that portly Cossack in good.

  But that’s when a whole mess of motor car headlights comes glaring onto the lot of us from across Patchtown Road and we hear all their engines roar to life. Looking over, I can see there’s maybe a dozen deputy cars setting there right across the street hemming us in pretty as you please. They must have come the back way past McKluskey’s and snuck down First Street when everybody was over on the picket line.

  “Now clear outta here ya damn stinkin pollocks,” McMullen says. “We’re unloading this train.” He lets loose a round from his pistol and them deputy cars begin creeping towards us.

  Folks start to turn away, backing theirselves down Patchtown Road. But Charlie Dugan kicks up yelling. He says, “Stay where yer at! Ya ain’t done nothin wrong!” Some of them men stop, and Charlie keeps on yelling, his voice ringing out. Two big hunkies let him get up on their shoulders. “Don’t let them get rid of ya that quick. Ya men tell them scabs these mines are struck mines.”

  While everybody’s eyes is glued to Charlie Dugan, Buzzy steps back out from behind the corner of the powerhouse. He fires one of them cast iron nuts up over the crowd. It zips through the air in front of the tipple and streaks down to crack the fat Cossack right on his white forehead.

  Nobody knows what happened at first, because the tubby Pinkerton just drops to his knees. But when he splashes right outta the train, all the miners laugh. That’s when McMullen starts yelling for his Cossacks to give it to us.

  A bunch of them Pinkertons flop down off the rail cars pronto and start whacking at the closest miners with their gun butts. It’s crazy like back in the early days of the strike. Cossacks is yelling and miners is swinging at the Cossacks with hammers and sawed-off shovel handles, pick handles, anything. Cause I already been cracked in the face once this week, I’m not sure whether to get mixed up or keep clear of things. I watch Buzzy over by the tipple man’s shack. He’s near to braining one of them Pinkerton guards with a broom handle.

  But when the Pinkertons from the line of deputy cars get into it too, it goes real bad for us, cause they’re firing off the buckshot. Some of us are getting tagged and the rest is running like hell. Them shotgun blasts kick up the coal dust four and five feet in the air and a lot of them miners and their wives run towards Paint Creek, up Patchtown Road, anywhere. The ones that ain’t running fast enough, they’re getting clubbed with the butts of them guns.

  Once all the guards from the cars has run past the powerhouse, I see my chance to get the hell away from that Cossack stew. I start running down along the tracks headed for Paint Creek, but I run smack into the back of one of them guards. I spin around and sprint for all I’m worth back up towards the station platform with that guard dashing right after me.

  When I get up past the locomotive, I run in front of Charlie Dugan, and he reaches down one of his big hands and grabs hold of the collar of my pit jacket. He gives me a yank up over the latch between two of the train cars and then shoves me on through. I roll over a couple of times in the pea shale, but I don’t even feel it. Getting up, I just start running again fast as I can manage down along the Paint Creek tracks and I don’t look back. Not once.

  Five

  Holding court like, Buzzy’s setting up at the bar of the 40 Hotel. He’s got Stash and Baldy with him and they’re clutching coffee mugs of beer in their hands. They been chewing over the whole business with that scab train for three damn hours. Hell, it’s all they been talking ’bout for the last week and a half.

  “So I give it to him, ya know,” Buzzy says. “Fat bastard fell outta that train like a two-hundred-pound sack a shit. Heard they sent his ass straight back to Homestead.”

  I’m setting over by the wall with Mikey where we’re playing checkers and Mikey’s listening to all this close. He’s saying to me how he wishes he could have been down the 40 station to see some of them guards have their turn at catching a beating. I’m thinking it weren’t so bad for him that he had to go up to Vintondale to help his uncle out with his pigs.

  “I dunno,” I says to Mikey. “It was a pretty rough spot, and I don’t know we got much from it.”

  It’s the middle of the afternoo
n and there ain’t too many men in the bar, so everybody setting around can hear what I’m saying. Buzzy spins round on his stool and looks at me like I lost my mind.

  “Whatcha mean, Chester?” he says. “They ain’t brought in one scab train since.”

  “Is that all ya can see, Buzzy?” I ask him. “What about all the miners that got the beat down?”

  “If yer gonna eat eggs in the morning,” Buzzy laughs. “Somebody’s gotta break ’em open.”

  I don’t wanna argue with Buzzy, but I can’t seem to steer clear neither. I start going on ’bout how many miners and there wifes got banged up or trampled and the way the Pinkertons put the curfew on all the Patchtowns.

  “How we gonna get these mines union with that goddamn McMullen hisself set up like a king right here in the 40 Little Office? He’s watchin everything we do.”

  Everybody’s looking at me now, and I can see Buzzy’s gripping onto his mug real tight like he’s getting ready to fling it cross the barroom at me, but some of the other men at the bar are shaking their heads like I know what I’m talking about.

  “That’s plenty outta you, Chester,” Buzzy says.

  I flash a quick look over at the men who’s nodding and then my eyes go right back down to the checkerboard. All I want is to finish my mug of beer and get outta the damn hotel, but Mikey keeps on asking me questions ’bout the scab train beatings, who got hit, who gave it to which of them guards.

  “Mikey,” I says finally. “Shut the hell up!”

  I raise up from the table and drink off the little bit of beer left in my coffee mug before I slap it down onto the plank wood tabletop. Everybody in the 40 Hotel barroom looks at me when I walk across the room. I don’t give a damn and don’t even say goodbye to nobody. I just make for the door.

  When I grab hold of the cast iron handle of the frame door, Mr. Facianni, who’s the barber for the Eye-tiez down Dago Town in Windber, has got his hand on the other side, like to pull it open.

  I let go of the door and step over to the side, cause even though he’s just supposed to be the Eye-tie barber, everybody knows he’s really the boss of them Black Handers and they’re nothing to fool with. They run the liquor and the number payoff through the whole county and all kinds of worse stuff too.

  When Facianni sees me jump outta his way so quick, he steps back away from the door and waves his hand for me to come on out. He’s wrapped in a brown suit with a necktie splitting his shirt in two and a big brown hat plopped down on top of his head.

  He gives me a fake little smile and says, “C’mon boy. Let’s go.”

  My mouth gets dry and I slip out past him quick. He tromps inside the barroom, and the two big fellas what’s with him, one fat and one thin, follow right behind. From out on the porch, I sneak a peek into the window. Standing next to the bar with his feet spread wide apart, Facianni tosses his hat on one of the clothtop stools. Reaching up a bit, he drops his hand heavy down on Buzzy’s shoulder. Them big dagos in suits wave Stash and Baldy off, over to the checkers table with Mikey. Then Facianni hoists hisself up onto the stool to the side of Buzzy, and the bartender pours him a coffee cup full of dark wine.

  Catching a lungful of that sulfur smoke out on the porch, I watch Facianni lean his dark face in close to Buzzy’s. Whatever he says, Buzzy must not like it, cause he creases his mouth and clacks his beer mug down onto bar. Facianni shrugs his shoulders and lowers hisself down off the stool to the plank floor. When he waves for them, them big dagos strut over and they all start for the door. I pull my cap down tight on my head and shag down the stairs and out onto Patchtown Road headed for Windber.

  Cause they only got candles, the Hungarian church is dark as a tomb inside and I’m feeling kinda funny, cause I ain’t never been to no Hungarian church before. But for what I gotta say, I don’t want no Polish priests to know nothing about it. I slip up the aisle between the rows of pews and get into the line of Hungarians snaking back from the confessional door. I stand there with them hunkies, watching them go in one by one to see the priest.

  When it’s my turn, I shuffle in and kneel down. It’s all dark wood in there and there’s a varnished wood screen with square holes cut in it and a thick purple curtain. I twist the curtain over to the side a little so I can see through the holes just a little to make sure somebody’s over there.

  “Father,” I says, “I ain’t no Hungarian, but I come to confess.”

  The priest asks me how long it’s been since my last confession, and I tell him it’s been a while and we leave it at that. Then he asks me about my sins. When I don’t say nothing for a bit, he asks me how old I am. I wanna tell him that I’m older, but I figure lying to the priest in confession is probably a pretty bad sin, so I give him the truth.

  When he hears that I’m going to turn fifteen next month, he says there ain’t nothing I could have done so bad that God can’t forgive me. I can almost hear the smile sneaking into his voice like I’m some kinda dumbass come into this confession all scared and nervous just to admit about saying “Jesus Christ” too damn much or staring at some Hungarian girl’s fancy ass.

  So, I says to him right off, “Father, ya know ’bout that scab got killed up behind 40.”

  He says that he knows about it. There’s a second of quiet, and then all of the smile’s gone outta his voice. He says, “Son, if ya know somethin ’bout what happened up there, you gotta tell me.”

  “Father,” I says. “I was one of the ones what chased that scab into the ditch.”

  I set there in the close-in dark of the confessional. I can hear that Hungarian priest breathing slow and heavy on the other side of the screen, hear him rustling his surplice. I don’t know whether I should keep running my mouth or just get up out of there and leave.

  “Wuz ya the one that killed him?” he asks, finally.

  “No,” I says. “It was my brother what killed him.”

  I lay it out for that priest, the whole story of how we waited for them scabs to be coming home from the mine and how we chased them through the woods. I tell him ’bout getting the smack on the jaw and how it was on accident that Buzzy got the scab on the head instead of the shoulder with the bat. I tell him it was only later we found out them dagos didn’t know they was scabbing.

  He listens close to all of this, asking me questions ’bout how many scabs was there and where it was Buzzy hit the dago and stuff like that. Before he gives me the penance, he makes me tell him again ’bout throwing them rocks and how come we brung the bat.

  Soon as I receive the absolution, I get up and slide off into one of them Hungarian pews. I flop down on my knees and start into the whole baker’s dozen of Hail Marys.

  After I’m done. I pull myself up and go outside of the Hungarian church. I set down on the steps for a long minute thinking about the fella that got killed, who he might have been and the way he got brung here, but I also think about the folks on our side that the Pinkertons drug out of their houses and the ones that got the beat down at the 40 station. I wonder if maybe there’s some way all of this balances itself out, but the whole thing all feels like two plus two equals five. I think some about the confession too, the way the priest asked me if I was sorry for my sins. I told that hunkie I was, but if the dago had knew he was scabbing on us, I doubt I’d feel half so bad as I do. Truth told, I don’t know this confessing makes me feel a damn bit better than I did before. I can’t even really say why I went. Maybe just cause it’s the one thing Buzzy wouldn’t of done.

  Six

  Four days later and the rest of the guards Berwind’s sent for after the 40 Station Riot must have all come in, because they got 40 Patchtown locked down tight as the paymaster’s satchel. Ain’t enough McMullen’s shacked up down the Little Office. Now there’s horse Cossacks all up and down our streets and a whole carload of Pinkertons keeping watch at the top of Patchtown Road from the top of 40 Hill. Hell, miners can’t even leave 40 at all unless they get the okay from one of them guards. For sure, we ain’t gonna see no more
union organizers coming our way for a good long time.

  Not being much able to leave the house, Buzzy and me and Lottie and our ma just been setting, playing cards round the kitchen table, what Buzzy and me nailed back together after he broke it on the little Cossack when they came to visit. Lottie’s winning for the third time this afternoon. Buzzy says she’s cheating, but I don’t see it. The twins is off in the parlor cutting some dolls outta the newspaper left from what me and Buzzy used to line our shoes with. Johnny’s setting in the dining room chewing on the wax from an old beeswax lamp. My ma pushes the rest of her matchsticks into the center of the table.

  She says, “Time to get supper started up.”

  Cause there ain’t no more cabbage or hamburg, we’re eating mush and potatoes again. Buzzy’s been talking about going out and stealing a chicken from outta McKluskey’s henhouse, but Lottie told him not to try it. She says everybody knows we ain’t got no chickens.

  “People smell that chicken cookin the whole damn way to Ashtola,” she says.

  “Lottie’s right,” ma says to Buzzy. “Ya bring enough damn trouble on yerself without bein labeled a chicken thief besides.”